Abstract 3D shapes viewer.

The concrete implementations are:

TViewerX3D : X3d viewer
TGLViewer : OpenGL viewer

3D Viewer Infrastructure Overview

The 3D Viewer infrastructure consists of:

TVirtualViewer3D interface: An abstract handle to the viewer, allowing client to test preferences, add objects, control the viewer via scripting (to be added) etc. -TBuffer3D class hierarchy: Used to describe 3D objects ("shapes")
- filled /added by negotiation with viewer via TVirtualViewer3D.

Together these allow clients to publish objects to any one of the 3D viewers (currently OpenGL/x3d,TPad), free of viewer specific drawing code. They allow our simple x3d viewer, and considerably more sophisticated OpenGL one to both work with both geometry libraries (g3d and geom) efficiently.

Publishing to a viewer consists of the following steps:

Create / obtain viewer handle
Begin scene on viewer
Fill mandatory parts of TBuffer3D describing object
Add to viewer
Fill optional parts of TBuffer3D if requested by viewer, and add again ... repeat 3/4/5 as required
End scene on viewer

Creating / Obtaining Viewer

Create/obtain the viewer handle via local/global pad - the viewer is always bound to a TPad object at present [This may be removed as a restriction in the future] . You should perform the publishing to the viewer described below in the Paint() method of the object you attach to the pad (via Draw())

TVirtualViewer3D * v = gPad->GetViewer3D("xxxx");

" xxxx" is viewer type: OpenGL "ogl", X3D "x3d" or Pad "pad" (default). The viewer is created via the plugin manager, attached to pad, and the interface returned.

Begin / End Scene

Objects must be added to viewer between BeginScene/EndScene calls e.g.

v->BeginScene();
.....
v->AddObject(....);
v->AddObject(....);
.....
v->EndScene();

The BeginScene call will cause the viewer to suspend redraws etc, and after the EndScene the viewer will reset the camera to frame the new scene and redraw. [x3d viewer does not support changing of scenes - objects added after the first Open/CloseScene pair will be ignored.]

Filling TBuffer3D and Adding to Viewer

The viewers behind the TVirtualViewer3D interface differ greatly in their capabilities e.g.

Some know how to draw certain shapes natively (e.g. spheres/tubes in OpenGL) - others always require a raw tessellation description of points/lines/segments.
Some need the 3D object positions in the global frame, others can cope with local frames + a translation matrix - which can give considerable performance benefits.

To cope with these situations the object buffer is filled out in negotiation with the viewer. TBuffer3D classes are conceptually divided into enumerated sections Core, BoundingBox, Raw etc (see TBuffer3D.h for more details).

The SectionsValid() / SetSectionsValid / ClearSectionsValid() methods of TBuffer3D are used to test/set/clear these section valid flags.

The sections found in TBuffer3D (Core/BoundingBox/Raw Sizes/Raw) are sufficient to describe any tessellated shape in a generic fashion. An additional ShapeSpecific section in derived shape specific classes allows a more abstract shape description ("a sphere of inner radius x, outer radius y"). This enables a viewer which knows how to draw (tessellate) the shape itself to do so, which can bring considerable performance and quality benefits, while providing a generic fallback suitable for all viewers.

The rules for client negotiation with the viewer are:

If suitable specialized TBuffer3D class exists, use it, otherwise use TBuffer3D.
Complete the mandatory Core section.
Complete the ShapeSpecific section if applicable.
Complete the BoundingBox if you can.
Pass this buffer to the viewer using one of the AddObject() methods - see below.

If the viewer requires more sections to be completed (Raw/RawSizes) AddObject() will return flags indicating which ones, otherwise it returns kNone. You must fill the buffer and mark these sections valid, and pass the buffer again. A typical code snippet would be:

TBuffer3DSphere sphereBuffer;
// Fill out kCore...
// Fill out kBoundingBox...
// Fill out kShapeSpecific for TBuffer3DSphere
// Try first add to viewer
Int_t reqSections = viewer->AddObject(buffer);
if (reqSections != TBuffer3D::kNone) {
  if (reqSections & TBuffer3D::kRawSizes) {
     // Fill out kRawSizes...
  }
  if (reqSections & TBuffer3D::kRaw) {
     // Fill out kRaw...
  }
  // Add second time to viewer - ignore return cannot do more
  viewer->AddObject(buffer);
  }
}

ShapeSpecific: If the viewer can directly display the buffer without filling of the kRaw/kRawSizes section it will not need to request client side tessellation. Currently we provide the following various shape specific classes, which the OpenGL viewer can take advantage of (see TBuffer3D.h and TBuffer3DTypes.h)

TBuffer3DSphere - solid, hollow and cut spheres*
TBuffer3DTubeSeg - angle tube segment
TBuffer3DCutTube - angle tube segment with plane cut ends.

OpenGL only supports solid spheres at present - cut/hollow ones will be requested tessellated.

Anyone is free to add new TBuffer3D classes, but it should be clear that the viewers require updating to be able to take advantage of them. The number of native shapes in OpenGL will be expanded over time.

BoundingBox: You are not obliged to complete this, as any viewer requiring one internally (OpenGL) will build one for you if you do not provide. However to do this the viewer will force you to provide the raw tessellation, and the resulting box will be axis aligned with the overall scene, which is non-ideal for rotated shapes.

As we need to support orientated (rotated) bounding boxes, TBuffer3D requires the 6 vertices of the box. We also provide a convenience function, SetAABoundingBox(), for simpler case of setting an axis aligned bounding box.

Master/Local Reference Frames

The Core section of TBuffer3D contains two members relating to reference frames: fLocalFrame & fLocalMaster. fLocalFrame indicates if any positions in the buffer (bounding box and tessellation vertexes) are in local or master (world frame). fLocalMaster is a standard 4x4 translation matrix (OpenGL column major ordering) for placing the object into the 3D master frame.

If fLocalFrame is kFALSE, fLocalMaster should contain an identity matrix. This is set by default, and can be reset using SetLocalMasterIdentity() function.

Logical & Physical Objects

There are two cases of object addition:

Add this object as a single independent entity in the world reference frame.
Add a physical placement (copy) of this logical object (described in local reference frame).

The second case is very typical in geometry packages, GEANT4, where we have very large number repeated placements of relatively few logical (unique) shapes. Some viewers (OpenGL only at present) are able to take advantage of this by identifying unique logical shapes from the fID logical ID member of TBuffer3D. If repeated addition of the same fID is found, the shape is cached already - and the costly tessellation does not need to be sent again. The viewer can also perform internal GL specific caching with considerable performance gains in these cases.

For this to work correctly the logical object in must be described in TBuffer3D in the local reference frame, complete with the local/master translation. The viewer indicates this through the interface method

PreferLocalFrame()

If this returns kTRUE you can make repeated calls to AddObject(), with TBuffer3D containing the same fID, and different fLocalMaster placements.

For viewers supporting logical/physical objects, the TBuffer3D content refers to the properties of logical object, with the fLocalMaster transform and the fColor and fTransparency attributes, which can be varied for each physical object.

As a minimum requirement all clients must be capable of filling the raw tessellation of the object buffer, in the master reference frame. Conversely viewers must always be capable of displaying the object described by this buffer.

Scene Rebuilds

It should be understood that AddObject is not an explicit command to the viewer

it may for various reasons decide to ignore it:
It already has the object internally cached .
The object falls outside some 'interest' limits of the viewer camera.
The object is too small to be worth drawing.

In all these cases AddObject() returns kNone, as it does for successful addition, simply indicating it does not require you to provide further information about this object. You should not try to make any assumptions about what the viewer did with it.

This enables the viewer to be connected to a client which sends potentially millions of objects, and only accept those that are of interest at a certain time, caching the relatively small number of CPU/memory costly logical shapes, and retaining/discarding the physical placements as required. The viewer may decide to force the client to rebuild (republish) the scene (via a TPad repaint at present), and thus collect these objects if the internal viewer state changes. It does this presently by forcing a repaint on the attached TPad object - hence the reason for putting all publishing to the viewer in the attached pad objects Paint() method. We will likely remove this requirement in the future, indicating the rebuild request via a normal ROOT signal, which the client can detect.

Physical IDs

TVirtualViewer3D provides for two methods of object addition:virtual Int_t AddObject(const TBuffer3D & buffer, Bool_t * addChildren = 0)

virtual Int_t AddObject(UInt_t physicalID, const TBuffer3D & buffer, Bool_t * addChildren = 0)

If you use the first (simple) case a viewer using logical/physical pairs will generate IDs for each physical object internally. In the second you can specify a unique identifier from the client, which allows the viewer to be more efficient. It can now cache both logical and physical objects, and only discard physical objects no longer of interest as part of scene rebuilds.

Child Objects

In many geometries there is a rigid containment hierarchy, and so if the viewer is not interested in a certain object due to limits/size then it will also not be interest in any of the contained branch of descendents. Both AddObject() methods have an addChildren parameter. The viewer will complete this (if passed) indicating if children (contained within the one just sent) are worth adding.

Recycling TBuffer3D

Once add AddObject() has been called, the contents are copied to the viewer internally. You are free to destroy this object, or recycle it for the next object if suitable.

Definition at line 43 of file TVirtualViewer3D.h.

Public Member Functions
virtual	~TVirtualViewer3D ()

virtual Bool_t	PreferLocalFrame () const =0

virtual Bool_t	CanLoopOnPrimitives () const

virtual void	PadPaint (TVirtualPad *)

virtual void	ObjectPaint (TObject , Option_t ="")

virtual void	BeginScene ()=0

virtual Bool_t	BuildingScene () const =0

virtual void	EndScene ()=0

virtual Int_t	AddObject (const TBuffer3D &buffer, Bool_t *addChildren=0)=0

virtual Int_t	AddObject (UInt_t physicalID, const TBuffer3D &buffer, Bool_t *addChildren=0)=0

virtual Bool_t	OpenComposite (const TBuffer3D &buffer, Bool_t *addChildren=0)=0

virtual void	CloseComposite ()=0

virtual void	AddCompositeOp (UInt_t operation)=0

virtual TObject *	SelectObject (Int_t, Int_t)

virtual void	DrawViewer ()

virtual void	PrintObjects ()

virtual void	ResetCameras ()

virtual void	ResetCamerasAfterNextUpdate ()

Public Member Functions inherited from TObject
	TObject ()

	TObject (const TObject &object)
	TObject copy ctor. More...

TObject &	operator= (const TObject &rhs)
	TObject assignment operator. More...

virtual	~TObject ()
	TObject destructor. More...

virtual void	AppendPad (Option_t *option="")
	Append graphics object to current pad. More...

virtual void	Browse (TBrowser *b)
	Browse object. May be overridden for another default action. More...

virtual const char *	ClassName () const
	Returns name of class to which the object belongs. More...

virtual void	Clear (Option_t *="")

virtual TObject *	Clone (const char *newname="") const
	Make a clone of an object using the Streamer facility. More...

virtual Int_t	Compare (const TObject *obj) const
	Compare abstract method. More...

virtual void	Copy (TObject &object) const
	Copy this to obj. More...

virtual void	Delete (Option_t *option="")
	Delete this object. More...

virtual Int_t	DistancetoPrimitive (Int_t px, Int_t py)
	Computes distance from point (px,py) to the object. More...

virtual void	Draw (Option_t *option="")
	Default Draw method for all objects. More...

virtual void	DrawClass () const
	Draw class inheritance tree of the class to which this object belongs. More...

virtual TObject *	DrawClone (Option_t *option="") const
	Draw a clone of this object in the current pad. More...

virtual void	Dump () const
	Dump contents of object on stdout. More...

virtual void	Execute (const char method, const char params, Int_t *error=0)
	Execute method on this object with the given parameter string, e.g. More...

virtual void	Execute (TMethod method, TObjArray params, Int_t *error=0)
	Execute method on this object with parameters stored in the TObjArray. More...

virtual void	ExecuteEvent (Int_t event, Int_t px, Int_t py)
	Execute action corresponding to an event at (px,py). More...

virtual TObject *	FindObject (const char *name) const
	Must be redefined in derived classes. More...

virtual TObject *	FindObject (const TObject *obj) const
	Must be redefined in derived classes. More...

virtual Option_t *	GetDrawOption () const
	Get option used by the graphics system to draw this object. More...

virtual UInt_t	GetUniqueID () const
	Return the unique object id. More...

virtual const char *	GetName () const
	Returns name of object. More...

virtual const char *	GetIconName () const
	Returns mime type name of object. More...

virtual Option_t *	GetOption () const

virtual char *	GetObjectInfo (Int_t px, Int_t py) const
	Returns string containing info about the object at position (px,py). More...

virtual const char *	GetTitle () const
	Returns title of object. More...

virtual Bool_t	HandleTimer (TTimer *timer)
	Execute action in response of a timer timing out. More...

virtual ULong_t	Hash () const
	Return hash value for this object. More...

virtual Bool_t	InheritsFrom (const char *classname) const
	Returns kTRUE if object inherits from class "classname". More...

virtual Bool_t	InheritsFrom (const TClass *cl) const
	Returns kTRUE if object inherits from TClass cl. More...

virtual void	Inspect () const
	Dump contents of this object in a graphics canvas. More...

virtual Bool_t	IsFolder () const
	Returns kTRUE in case object contains browsable objects (like containers or lists of other objects). More...

virtual Bool_t	IsEqual (const TObject *obj) const
	Default equal comparison (objects are equal if they have the same address in memory). More...

virtual Bool_t	IsSortable () const

Bool_t	IsOnHeap () const

Bool_t	IsZombie () const

virtual Bool_t	Notify ()
	This method must be overridden to handle object notification. More...

virtual void	ls (Option_t *option="") const
	The ls function lists the contents of a class on stdout. More...

virtual void	Paint (Option_t *option="")
	This method must be overridden if a class wants to paint itself. More...

virtual void	Pop ()
	Pop on object drawn in a pad to the top of the display list. More...

virtual void	Print (Option_t *option="") const
	This method must be overridden when a class wants to print itself. More...

virtual Int_t	Read (const char *name)
	Read contents of object with specified name from the current directory. More...

virtual void	RecursiveRemove (TObject *obj)
	Recursively remove this object from a list. More...

virtual void	SaveAs (const char filename="", Option_t option="") const
	Save this object in the file specified by filename. More...

virtual void	SavePrimitive (std::ostream &out, Option_t *option="")
	Save a primitive as a C++ statement(s) on output stream "out". More...

virtual void	SetDrawOption (Option_t *option="")
	Set drawing option for object. More...

virtual void	SetUniqueID (UInt_t uid)
	Set the unique object id. More...

virtual void	UseCurrentStyle ()
	Set current style settings in this object This function is called when either TCanvas::UseCurrentStyle or TROOT::ForceStyle have been invoked. More...

virtual Int_t	Write (const char *name=0, Int_t option=0, Int_t bufsize=0)
	Write this object to the current directory. More...

virtual Int_t	Write (const char *name=0, Int_t option=0, Int_t bufsize=0) const
	Write this object to the current directory. More...

void *	operator new (size_t sz)

void *	operator new[] (size_t sz)

void *	operator new (size_t sz, void *vp)

void *	operator new[] (size_t sz, void *vp)

void	operator delete (void *ptr)
	Operator delete. More...

void	operator delete[] (void *ptr)
	Operator delete []. More...

void	SetBit (UInt_t f, Bool_t set)
	Set or unset the user status bits as specified in f. More...

void	SetBit (UInt_t f)

void	ResetBit (UInt_t f)

Bool_t	TestBit (UInt_t f) const

Int_t	TestBits (UInt_t f) const

void	InvertBit (UInt_t f)

virtual void	Info (const char method, const char msgfmt,...) const
	Issue info message. More...

virtual void	Warning (const char method, const char msgfmt,...) const
	Issue warning message. More...

virtual void	Error (const char method, const char msgfmt,...) const
	Issue error message. More...

virtual void	SysError (const char method, const char msgfmt,...) const
	Issue system error message. More...

virtual void	Fatal (const char method, const char msgfmt,...) const
	Issue fatal error message. More...

void	AbstractMethod (const char *method) const
	Use this method to implement an "abstract" method that you don't want to leave purely abstract. More...

void	MayNotUse (const char *method) const
	Use this method to signal that a method (defined in a base class) may not be called in a derived class (in principle against good design since a child class should not provide less functionality than its parent, however, sometimes it is necessary). More...

void	Obsolete (const char method, const char asOfVers, const char *removedFromVers) const
	Use this method to declare a method obsolete. More...

Static Public Member Functions
static TVirtualViewer3D *	Viewer3D (TVirtualPad pad=0, Option_t type="")

Static Public Member Functions inherited from TObject
static Long_t	GetDtorOnly ()
	Return destructor only flag. More...

static void	SetDtorOnly (void *obj)
	Set destructor only flag. More...

static Bool_t	GetObjectStat ()
	Get status of object stat flag. More...

static void	SetObjectStat (Bool_t stat)
	Turn on/off tracking of objects in the TObjectTable. More...

Additional Inherited Members
Public Types inherited from TObject
enum	EStatusBits { kCanDelete = BIT(0), kMustCleanup = BIT(3), kObjInCanvas = BIT(3), kIsReferenced = BIT(4), kHasUUID = BIT(5), kCannotPick = BIT(6), kNoContextMenu = BIT(8), kInvalidObject = BIT(13) }

enum	{ kIsOnHeap = 0x01000000, kNotDeleted = 0x02000000, kZombie = 0x04000000, kBitMask = 0x00ffffff }

enum	{ kSingleKey = BIT(0), kOverwrite = BIT(1), kWriteDelete = BIT(2) }

Protected Member Functions inherited from TObject
void	MakeZombie ()

virtual void	DoError (int level, const char location, const char fmt, va_list va) const
	Interface to ErrorHandler (protected). More...